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Naomasa Tsukauchi is a busy man. He is the head detective of the Musutafu Police Department and the position comes with a lot of responsibility.
One of those responsibilities is, apparently, working with hero students on what police interrogations are like. Usually this was a thing for the second years, but Eraserhead had insisted that he take an extra hour out of his schedule to do the first years too.
Sansa was also “conveniently” busy today and not available to do the demonstrations himself. Frankly Naomasa didn’t buy the “it’s my girlfriend’s birthday” excuse. Mostly because he was pretty sure Sansa did not have a girlfriend. Text conversations... tch, his one weakness.
So here he is, having finished up with the second years and already hearing the excited yelling of the first years as they enter the mock interrogation room that UA had set up for them. Naomasa immediately recognized the silver haired vigilante from all those years ago.
“Alright settle down,” Eraserhead starts and the class immediately shuts up. Well, the man may be the reason that Naomasa has to be here in the first place but at least he’s capable of scaring his class into submission. That’s better than the second years...
“As you know, today you’ll be doing mock police interrogations.” Eraserhead begins. “Often heroes are pulled into police stations to give statements on what occurred during an operation. Because this is standard procedure, you’ll be participating in one on one interrogations with Detective Tsukauchi here to get a feel for what it’s like. You’ll each be given a small file regarding a made up case to talk about, but other than the details in that, tell the truth.”
The class of twenty students nods eagerly. Well, most of them looked eager. One Shinsou Hitoshi looked bored out of his mind.
Naomasa takes this moment to stand up, ready to give his little spiel now that Eraserhead had spoken. The kids fall silent, waiting for him.
“Because this is meant to be one on one, and watching a classmate answer questions before you would desensitize you to the experience, all of you will leave the room and wait in the hallway until you’re called in.” He explains calmly. “This may seem nerve wracking, but I’m not interrogating you as a criminal, but as an ally. Just tell the truth and what’s on the card you’re handed and you’ll be fine.”
“Yes sir,” they chorus.
“Okay, now go line up outside single file.” Eraserhead instructs.
Naomasa takes his seat again and waits for the first student. He knew the information they were told like the back of his hand, seeing as he’d already heard it plenty of times today. The student had stopped a group of three small time villains attempting to rob a jewelry store. Two of them had been captured and were in custody but the other had gotten away due to what seemed to be a teleportation quirk. The rest of the details were up to the student to fill in.
The door opens and a blond student saunters in, hands deep in his pockets, looking completely unbothered by the entire situation.
“Hello, I’m Detective Naomasa Tsukauchi. Take a seat, I’m going to ask you a few questions.” He recites. This was what? The 30th time he’s said that today? 40th? Ugh.
The kid sits down and glares, as if he’s trying to provide Naomasa with his opinion that this was bullshit via telepathy.
Naomasa takes out his pen and paper, which was full of halfhearted scribbles of names and ages from today. “What’s your name?”
“Bakugou Katsuki.” True.
“How old are you?”
“15.” True.
“What’s your hero name?” He asks next.
At this, Bakugou pauses. “I don’t have one.” True.
“Alright, your quirk?”
“Explosion.” True.
“Thank you,” and this is the part where he gets into the constant stream of eye twitching. There was a reason he always made Sansa do this, and that’s because he gets a raging headache from the many lies he has to hear in a short period of time. “Now, what happened with the robbery that took place this morning?”
Bakugou begins to recite the information that he was told, making up parts to fill in the blanks and Naomasa dealt with his eye twitching at every other sentence. Eventually, he finishes the first mock interrogation of the first years and thanks Bakugou for his time, sending him out the door.
The next student walks in. They talk. They leave. Rinse and repeat.
At about the thirteenth student, Shinsou Hitoshi enters and sits down at the table without making a sound.
“Hello, I’m Detective Naomasa Tsukauchi.” He recites, even though he’s sure the kid remembers him. “I just need to ask you a few questions regarding yourself and the robbery you interrupted this morning.” He’d never actually interrogated Shinsou before, seeing as they weren’t planning on imprisoning the literal child committing vigilantism. Naomasa had handed the small interrogation needed off to one of the lower ranked officers while he dealt with one of the bigger cases they had at the time.
The kid nods in response to Naomasa’s question.
“What’s your name?” He asks.
“Hitoshi Shinsou,” the kid replies.
Naomasa pauses, gaze snapping up in confusion. His quirk hadn’t rung true, but it hadn’t rung false either? Was... was his quirk broken? That hadn’t happened before?
He shook it off, hoping it was a fluke or something. “How old are you?”
“15.”
True. False. Yes. No. Unsure. What. The. Fuck.
Naomasa doesn’t understand. His quirk is a literal lie detector, it’s just as straightforward as it sounds! If someone tells the truth, it rings true. If someone tells a lie, it rings false and his eye twitches as a result. But Shinsou(?) was somehow telling the truth and not the truth at the same time?
He takes a moment to stare at the kid, not letting his confusion slip through but trying to figure out how Shinsou had managed to break his quirk.
“What is your hero name?” He asks slowly.
“The late hero: Kakashi.” The kid smirks underneath his navy blue mask, eyes crinkling as if it were a funny joke to him.
True.
Naomasa is going to flip this table. How had that rung true but the kid’s name and age hadn’t?
“And your quirk?”
“Apocalips.”
Lie.
Naomasa blinks, staring at the kid who had just blatantly lied to his face without batting an eye.
“What...” he mutters under his breath. He looks up, “I’m going to take that blatant lie as an opportunity to tell you that I have a lie detection quirk.”
Shinsou hums, “A lie detection quirk, huh?”
“Yes.” From the look on Shinsou’s face, Naomasa gets the feeling that Shinsou is well aware of the chaos that he’s causing to Naomasa’s quirk.
“Interesting.”
“Yes, very.” Naomasa leans forward. “So what is your name, again?”
“Hitoshi Shinsou.” The kid repeats, voice steady, and Naomasa’s quirk goes into static mode again, unsure if it’s reading true or false.
“Okay, what is your other name?” He asks again.
“Shinsou Hitoshi,” he replies and Naomasa wonders why he needed to be the one doing this today. Sansa wouldn’t have questioned the kid’s statement, what with the easy way Shinsou gave his answers and the steadiness in his tone and gaze.
Then again, Sansa didn’t have a lie detection quirk.
Naomasa sighs and puts down his notebook, reaching up to rub at his temples. “How are you lying but not lying about your name? That makes no sense.”
The kid gives him a smile, but doesn’t respond otherwise.
“How old are you,” Naomasa decides to ask again.
“15.”
Truth. Lie.
Naomasa sighs, “How old are you?” He asks again.
“44.”
Truth. Lie.
Naomasa stares at the kid, whose smile has yet to fall.
“And what is your quirk?” He questions again.
“Brainwashing.”
Truth.
Naomasa pauses. Is it possible that Shinsou’s quirk is what was causing his quirk to go haywire? He didn’t remember what the quirk could do exactly, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t this.
“What does that entail?” He asks, just to try it out.
“When an opponent answers my question, I can control them.” Shinsou replies steadily.
True.
“Thank you,” he says and decides that his quirk wasn’t broken due to Shinsou’s quirk.
But then what was causing this?
Frankly, he didn’t think his quirk could be overused, seeing as it was constantly on, but Naomasa couldn’t think of any other reasons for this to be happening. “I don’t suppose you’ll tell me the other name you may or may not have?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Detective.”
Lie.
Naomasa is starting to hate this kid. Only a little bit. Kids are great, just... not quirk breaking ones, apparently.
“Let’s just move on then.” He decides, tired of this conversation already.
As he speaks with Shinsou about the made up situation, the other takes the rest of the simulation seriously, answering calmly and with detail. Now, all of the details were entirely made up, but he was treating it as if he were truly trying to give the police as much evidence as possible to work off of. It was a better report than Naomasa was used to getting from actual pro heroes.
“Thanks,” he says at the end, waving his hand as if to say ‘get out of here’ and the kid gets the message, standing and leaving without making a sound.
The next kid walks in. Naomasa hoped this one would be normal.
“Eraserhead,” he speaks up, unsure as to how he was supposed to bring this up. The kids had finished their lesson and run off to lunch, meaning now was probably the only time he could bring this up.
“Yes, detective?”
“I’d like to ask about Shinsou Hitoshi,” he says hesitantly. He knew Eraserhead’s connection to the kid, he knew the kid’s history with vigilantism, but this was a whole new brand of weird.
Eraserhead sighs, as if this was not entirely unexpected. “What did he do this time?”
Naomasa blinks. He knew they still had a standing search for Shinsou’s vigilante persona just in case, but he didn’t think that Shinsou was this difficult. “Well, it’s just... my quirk registered some of his statements as not a truth or a lie.”
“Sorry?” Eraserhead asks, looking at him with less exhaustion and more confusion.
“It’s not difficult to work around my quirk. As long as the target believes what they’re saying is true, then it can be fooled. But never before has it done... that.” Naomasa tries to explain.
“I don’t understand, so Shinsou was both managing to tell the truth and a lie at the same time?” Eraserhead clarifies.
“I guess?” Naomasa reaches up and runs a hand through his hair. “His name and age both registered as not truths but also not lies. I asked him to clarify, and he refused to give me another name but when I asked for an age he also told me he was 44. That rang the same.”
Eraserhead stares at him blankly, before turning to face the direction the kids had disappeared off to. “Anything else?”
“Well not really,” Naomasa starts and then pauses. “Unless you count him lying blatantly about his quirk at first and also giving a better mission report than most pro heroes ever do.”
“Yeah I would count that,” Eraserhead grumbles, and then even lower he mutters something that sounded like “child soldier.”
Naomasa’s heart skipped a beat, “Sorry what was that?”
Eraserhead waves a hand, “It’s nothing I can prove. I have a theory that he was involved in some sort of child experimentation organization, just from the way he acts and his... history.”
Naomasa frowns, “The implications of that...”
“I know. I have no proof or any leads so it’s a dead end, but each time new stuff like this comes up...” Eraserhead trails off.
“How much evidence do you have?”
“It’s all circumstantial really. Hitoshi has shown a tendency to analyze any room he enters, doesn’t make sound when he moves, carries out instructions with a military precision, hides razors in his shoes and knives in the couch, he compartmentalizes his emotions like he’s been trained to do it, he’s always covering his face and wearing clothing colored to blend into the background, and then there’s his entire vigilante thing. A child that young wouldn’t know how to fight better than I do without training. And he wouldn’t do all the rest of that either. The only explanation I can come up with is that he was part of an organization training child soldiers.”
Naomasa stares at Eraserhead for a long moment before exhaling slowly, “Shit, when you put it like that...”
“Yeah. But I can’t find any ties to anything like that, just the way he acts. And I sure as hell haven’t brought it up with him.” Eraserhead’s slouch is deeper than usual, truly showing the exhaustion the man was faced with.
“I’ll open an investigation into it,” Naomasa decides. “But since he obviously got out of that situation, if he was in it to begin with, then we’ll have to tread lightly. Bringing that back up could easily lead to dragging up a bunch of repressed trauma.”
“I’m pretty sure that kid’s entire life is repressed trauma,” Eraserhead grumbles, reaching up to run a hand through his long hair. “I’ve gone through his records though. It’s mapped out enough with various reports that there honestly isn’t much room for him to have been trained by an organization. That’s the biggest reason I’m hesitant to do anything.”
“Well, the kid did practice vigilantism in his free time, I wouldn’t put it past him.” Naomasa comments.
“True.” Eraserhead sighs. “I just don’t get it. 44? The kid’s 15.”
“That’s what he said,” Naomasa responds. “That one just straight up doesn’t make sense, but it’s the possibility that he has another name, perhaps one that he went by while apart of that organization, that worries me.”
Eraserhead doesn’t respond for a long moment. “Problem child,” the guy finally hisses out. “I knew adopting a child vigilante would be hard, but he’s really trying to send me to an early grave, huh?”
Naomasa pats him on the shoulder, “Well, he could be still causing you trouble out on the streets. At least now you can ground him.”
Eraserhead shakes his head, “Grounding him doesn’t work. Last time I tried that he looked like he’d just won the lottery. And then proceeded to do everything he possibly could to annoy me without actually breaking the rules.”
Naomasa snorts.
“Anyways, thanks for helping with the kids today. I wanted them to get experience with this stuff before they have to experience it. Hitoshi’s the one who found out about villains breaking into the USJ, and now I’m worried those villains will try again. Better to have them prepared for the aftermath as well as the fight if they do actually get attacked.”
Naomasa hums, “Oh, so that’s what this was about.”
“Yeah. After we found the damage done at the USJ, and realized that the attack would’ve occurred during Class 1-A’s lesson there... well I’ve been a bit more paranoid than I usually am. We don’t know who attacked, but we know they did and that they are dangerous. If Hitoshi hadn’t figured their strategy out, then who knows what would’ve happened.” Eraserhead huffs and then starts walking away. “I’ve got to go now, lunch break is only so long and I intend to get as much sleep as possible out of it.”
Naomasa chuckles, “Alright, Eraser. I’ll see you later, and I’ll contact you if I find anything that seems like it might fit that theory of yours.”
“Thanks.”
Naomasa watches Eraserhead leave and then turns back to the interrogation room, grabbing his coat and hat from where he’d left them on the extra chair in the corner.
Hitoshi Shinsou.
That kid is a mystery wrapped in a problem surrounded by an impenetrable wall. And he’s giving Naomasa a massive headache.
But, the kid is attending UA now, has a loving family, and (hopefully) isn’t committing anymore criminal offenses. For a kid with a history and personality like that, Naomasa figures that Shinsou had struck gold in terms of luck. He’s safe, perhaps even happy, and that’s all one can really ask for in this world.
Now, time to go home, sleep off this raging headache, and begin his new, somewhat unwanted, research project.